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The CofE doomed? Only because it’s surrendered to phony soullessness

by Ed West, Spectator

The Church of England is doomed, Lord Carey has said, warning that Anglicanism is just ‘one generation away from extinction’.

To be fair people have been saying this for a long time; in the mid-19th century the Church decided to make a survey of churchgoing, and were stunned to find out that only a quarter of people in England attended Anglican services and a similar number to non-Conformist services. Half the population wasn’t going at all.

Now you’d be lucky to get that many at Christmas. The Church faces the same problem as all churches, namely that religious belief continues to decline across Europe, and that those religions that do flourish tend to be quite wacky, whether the ‘ah bless, sweet’ variety or the ‘scary, frothing at the mouth’ strain.

Religion is becoming ever weirder to most people as Britain’s Christian legacy fades into the past. Most people of my parents’ generation weren’t believers, but they had grown up in households that were Christian or had a recent Christian past. Now it’s a much more distant memory. And the more strange that religion seems, the less likely it is that fellow travellers are going to want to take part, and religions are at their most benign and benevolent when they’re full of doubters.
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